Creature From The Black Lagoon

Release: 1954
Director: Jack Arnold
Production Company: Universal Pictures

 Notable Cast:

 Richard Carlson as David Reed
Julie Adams as Kay Lawrence
Richard Denning as Mark Williams

 Plot: A strange fossil discovery leads to an expedition to try and find the rest of the remains. The crew of the ship soon run into the Gill-Man who is a bigger menace than they were ready for.

 The Monster: The Gill-Man is a true icon of Hollywood monsters. He's right up there with Dracula, Frankenstein , Jason, etc as being one of the most recognizable Hollywood creatures of all time. Any sort of collection of famous monsters will have the Gill-man in it.

The Gill-Man himself appears to be fairly strong and can obviously breathe under water. He also seems to possess about human level intelligence. His scaly skin also seems to give him some level of invulnerability. He takes a harpoon shot at one point and mostly shrugs it off.

 Thoughts: This wasn't on my list for movies I was planning to review soon but it was on the recommend list after I finished watching Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. I've seen this movie quite a few times over the years and it never fails at entertaining me or being good.

I was really interested in what kind of budget this film had. It obviously had constraints when you see the limited number of sets and how small scale they kept things. But on that same note, the Gill-Man also looks fantastic. Sometimes when you see these movies in HD, the special effects fall apart. That doesn't happen here as I think the Gill-Man looks even better in HD. There is just so much attention to detail with the suit and his eyes are just creepy.

The underwater scenes are also fantastic. I don't know how they handled them but they are some of the best I have seen. The Gill-Man with David Reed really looks good. It looks deadly, desperate and frantic. The action scenes in general with the Gill-Man are great. He really racks up a body count and this movie in general doesn't shy away from violence.

As far as the Universal Monster films go, this is probably one of their best efforts. I would say it would just fall outside of the top 5 for me as Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein, The Mummy and The Wolf Man are all better than this film. If you are getting compared to those films though, then you are a really good movie.

You really can't say enough positive things about this film. The acting is good, the atmosphere is wonderful and it has a great monster with good action scenes. If I was giving someone a shortlist of 10-15 movies this would be a no-brainer to add to it for them. Even my wife who isn't a big fan of these older horror films really enjoyed the movie.

Verdict: What more do you need to say? This movie is an absolute classic in the horror genre. If you haven't seen it, what's wrong with you? Go see it. **** which gets this added to the Hall of Fame.

Where To Watch:
Amazon Prime Streaming (Paid Link)
Buy It On Blu-Ray (Paid Link)
Buy It On DVD (Paid Link)


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